Three Questions
by vonclausewits
Summary: A post Instinct offering. Because realigning the planets and bringing Helena back into Myka's orbit after the stink-fest that was 4.15 is the only reasonable response.
1. 1

1

She puzzled over the shadows darkening the driveway. The ones which reminded her of the measured goodbyes said only moments before. The embrace with Myka had been difficult considering the weight of the words unspoken between them. She had only made things worse by using the word _friend _and she knew it. Why had she said it? It sounded silly now in retrospect. Not silly, pathetic. But how could she communicate the bond that had formed instantly on their first meeting and only proved inescapable since then? _Impossible_. That bond pulled her towards the Warehouse and its devotees like a magnet at the most inopportune times. And the result was always the same. Afterwards she always felt as if she had been ripped away from the only person who had ever truly understood her…sometimes by the regents, more often by the vagaries of fate.

The Victorian shifted her weight and leaned against the granite counter of the kitchen which he had bragged so about in cooking class. Her feelings for him certainly seemed insignificant in light of her encounter in the driveway. Yes, he was a solid citizen who prized family and, most of all, his daughter. They had that in common, she supposed. Nate had welcomed her into his home and been unfailingly kind, recognizing the lost soul in her and gravitating towards it, like to like. Her very thoughts betrayed his generosity. And even if she _had_ mentally packed her bags a thousand times, there was Adelaide to consider. Being in the company of the precocious girl was akin to normalcy for her and _normal _was her watchword…a talisman with which to drive away evil spirits.

Myka had all but begged her. _Make this your home_, she said. And why shouldn't she? The warehouse had taken so much of her vitality—so much of her intellect. Was it so wrong to want something beyond the reach of the regents? She doubted that she could make a go of it anywhere if not in Boone. It was the kind of iconic American small town where you could still raise a family-a good place to grow up-a good place to take karate lessons.

Helena looked down at the cuticles she had begun to worry with the dull paring knife. Emily Lake urged her to give up the thoughts of Myka in the driveway. But it wasn't Emily standing in the kitchen fantasizing about the tall brunette with the eidetic memory-fantasizing about the smell of Myka. It couldn't have been her shampoo. Helena still wasn't convinced that such things were an improvement over the regimens of her own time. Was it her perfume? She doubted the agent even wore a scent. Too practical by half, Myka would doubtless be the type to prefer her father's shaving lotion. _Saddle soap._ That's what Myka would have smelled of in her own time, thought Helena. And this made her all the more maddeningly desirable.

She could imagine that the agent was the type to pack so lightly that even Pete was stunned by her economy. Who was she supposed to be impressing anyway? Perhaps a kit bag and a single change for the trip to Boone. After all, her suit was her armor and there was no need to change one's armor every day. It protected her from unwanted attention and advances while allowing her the freedom of movement to save the world, but it was purely a practical consideration.

Helena allowed herself to evoke the form under the armor briefly, strong and lithe and decidedly female. The Englishwoman congratulated herself on recognizing the right moment to clasp Myka to her before the grappling hook had done its work and lifted the two of them off the ground. Granted, she had paid for it dearly and spent a full week concealing her nearly dislocated shoulder before redesigning the handle to ease the load on her next time. _In the unlikely event that there was a next time._ It was the first time she had held the brunette close to her and she found that once was merely a tantalizing prelude. Despite the role reversal demanded by that scenario, Myka remained her knight in shining armor, protective and understanding at a time when she herself was practically unhinged. But Helena had seen Myka without the armor. Granted, she had been holding a gun to the agent's forehead at the time…but of what concern was that?

Helena was lost in the reverie of those particular thoughts when the doorbell rang.

Nate had fled, excusing himself on the pretense of taking Adelaide to his mother's, offering no assurances of his return. It was past eleven. Her senses were awake to the possibilities, but they were so easily dismissed. Myka could not have returned, with or without her partner. No doubt they were presently boarding a twin engine back to the Dakotas even as the thought entered her mind. The doorbell rang again, with no more insistence than if a delivery were being announced by the UPS man.

Helena walked quickly to the front door, expecting that she would open it to find a sullen Nate standing outside, begging to be admitted to his own home, all apologies for failing to perceive something that he could never have imagined, much less foreseen. But when she opened the door and began to speak, it wasn't to Nate as she had supposed. The agent on the other side had the uneasy look of someone unsure of the reason they had waited so long on the doorstep. Myka Bering's eyes were suddenly dark with tamped down anger and when the Warehouse agent stepped over the threshold, Helena was forced to withdraw into the home she had just hours ago shared with her new family.

The tall brunette jabbed her index finger into Helena as she drove the smaller woman backwards and demanded, "Is that it?"

"Is _what_ it?" responded the shorter woman in confusion.

"Goddammit you know what I am talking about, Helena. Don't play stupid with me," Myka all but shouted, her disheveled countenance closer to her prey than ever before.

"I am so tired of this—this _thing_—this thing we do. We don't talk about it. We say goodbye and I drive away and you…you don't stop me. Why don't you _stop_ me?"

Helena felt herself being driven into a corner, physically and conversationally, and could only sputter as she attempted to hold off the red-faced, gesticulating agent. Myka was raging like a bacchante, steering Helena to the wall of the same kitchen she had so recently been musing in. When she felt the counter behind her, she grabbed Myka's offending digit with her left hand and threw out her right to stop the agent's advance.

"Myka, stop…I'm sorry but I can't do this. I can't do this with you."

Her attacker appeared shell shocked and blinked back what looked like tears to the trained observer's eyes. "With _me_? What do you mean you can't do this with _me_? But you can do it with _him_…with Nate, or whatever his name is."

Myka knew very well what his name was and searched Helena's eyes for some evidence that her jealous accusation had hit its mark.

"Why can't you do this with me? Tell me, Helena." Myka was pleading now.

In an instant, it was clear to Helena that the agent in front of her was wholly ignorant of the Victorian's thinly veiled feelings for her. It was her turn to be stunned. Could it be that Myka was so oblivious? So unaware of what even casual observers easily detected? Helena refused to believe it.

She _had_ to know.

The sparks between them were visible from space, for god's sake. Even so, she felt an uncontrollable need to say it out loud, and it came out as a simple whisper, barely reaching the Warehouse agent's ear.

"Because I'm in love with you, my dear Myka."


	2. 2

Myka froze, then retreated a single step. Whatever she had been expecting to hear from Helena that night, the monosyllabic _l-word _was not remotely among those she had anticipated. Not that it was unwelcome. But her declaration was the verbal equivalent of an elevator dropping too suddenly beneath her feet. _Disorienting_ was a better descriptor. And as is often true for the disoriented, a verbal response failed her completely. She nodded slowly, less an acknowledgement than a barely perceptible movement allowing the words to more fully penetrate her. Her being was a viscous barrier and Helena's words could not cross through easily into Myka's conscious. The individual words might just as well have clung to her skin, protruding slightly as they tried to breach the tall brunette's protective layers. In the next moment, Helena was keenly aware that she was standing alone in her kitchen again. It was as if she had never heard the doorbell nor been assailed by the one person she would have willed through the door had she been granted a single wish. Her skin prickled with the night air as she stared blankly at the floor and contemplated the stark tiles. It occurred to her slowly that the door was open and the coolness she now felt was a direct result of that fact. Helena approached the front of the house half expecting to hear the squeal of tires in the drive or see a lone figure receding in the distance. Myka sat on the steps quietly holding her head in her hands. She didn't move as Helena sat beside her.

"It seems that I owe you an explanation," ventured Helena, as she drew her jacket to her neck in an attempt to stave off the chill. Myka's curls had fallen forward and the curtain of dark locks obscured the look on her face from Helena's searching eyes. Without raising her head, the agent tilted her face to her companion, directing her eyes toward the ivory skinned beauty who took the opportunity to cross a boundary between them. Helena reached across the short distance and pinned the hanging curls behind Myka's ear, exposing the other woman's tear stained face.

"I have stayed away to protect you, my darling." The words echoed in the air around them. "You must believe me, Myka."

She repressed the desire to reach again for the woman sitting beside her, sighing as she directed her eyes to the driveway and the shadows which had earlier held her attention. She once again pulled the jacket around herself, this time tighter.

"Protect me from what?" responded the hunched form almost too softly to be heard. She knew Helena's response before the author had given it voice.

"From me, of course. You have seen what I am capable of, my dear. The world is safe from me while I am here living as Emily Lake. Most importantly, _you_ are safe. And speaking of keeping you safe…" Helena paused as she too briefly considered whether beginning to lace her comments with innuendo at this juncture were really in her best interest, "…it is probably not advisable for you to be here so close to me when I have just made known my true feelings for you." Helena looked everywhere but at Myka, sifting her hands through her hair compulsively.

"I miss you more than I should if you were just my friend," replied the Warehouse agent, head up now as she watched Helena studiously attempt to avoid her eyes.

"Well of course you do, my dear. I am quite magnetic and a sterling conversationalist, hardly a wonder that you are captivated by me."

Myka laughed. It was the perfect rejoinder: one hundred percent self-effacing Helena, cloaked in vanity and narcissism.

She rebounded with a swipe of her own, knowing that Helena was attempting to divert the spotlight from her romantic admission, "Don't kid yourself, Helena. I'm sure it's just the accent."

The two were quiet then for a time, each thinking how true it was that the other knew her better than she knew herself. The agent was first to speak when it seemed that someone should break the silence. She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "So why did you call me in the first place? Did your will power fail you, Helena? Were you bored playing haus frau?" Myka surveyed the expanse of lawn and dark neighborhood beyond as she spoke, this time it was she who found it difficult to look at her companion.

"I deserved that," answered the Victorian, resigned to the need for an honest conversation with Myka at long last. "Truthfully, I needed to know whether it was doing any good—this self-imposed exile. I was hoping that my feelings for you might dissipate with the time and distance. I needed to test my hypothesis. Unfortunately, your presence here has underlined for me the colossal failure of my experiment. It seems that I am quite hopelessly smitten with you."

Helena had not yet met the curly haired agent's gaze. She felt that if she looked into Myka's eyes, she risked seeing loathing, pity or worst of all, apathy.

"So what am I supposed to do now? I mean, Pete is at the airport right now, probably wondering what the hell got into me when I abandoned him at the gate. I didn't even tell him where I was going. I mean, he's got to know where I am and what I'm doing. Granted the guy's an ass, but he's not blind."

Myka wiped her face with the sleeve of her jacket and then swept the sides of her fingertips under her eyes to remove the mascara that had run. She was repeating herself and knew it. _Time to buck up_. She put her hands on her knees and looked hard for the first time at the woman sitting beside her, appraising her. She was surprised that the heavy feeling of awkwardness she had expected had not materialized, despite her hesitant admission to the Brit. Sitting next to Helena still felt like sitting next to Helena. It was natural…and nice. Yes, the butterflies were still there, but nothing had really changed. _Scratch that, Helena just told me she's in love with me_. Things were different. While she was processing these thoughts, Helena had begun to speak again. And as before, she was doing so without looking directly at her companion. This time it was the steps in front of her which held her attention.

"I imagine that Peter does indeed know where to find you. You do wear your heart on your sleeve, Agent Bering. I'm sure we shall be interrupted _tout suite_ by a Farnsworth call from your charming partner. Perhaps before it happens I could interest you in that coffee? Might I suggest that we move this little chat of ours indoors where it is a bit warmer?"

"If you think that I am going to sit in that house again, on that couch, and have a rational conversation with you, I'm afraid you have vastly overestimated me."

Myka seethed a bit at the prospect of being reminded by her surroundings that the woman she was so focused on was quite obviously giving herself to someone else, a male someone else. It made her feel vaguely nauseous to think of Helena with anyone, let alone a specific person.

No, the steps were better. They could talk here.

"Can I ask you a question?" she ventured somberly.

She waited for Helena to look into her eyes for the first time since her intrusion into the now quiet home, and her patience paid off. Helena finally turned to hold her gaze, sable eyes betraying none of the feelings she had just shared with the agent. Myka's eyes were drawn inexorably to Helena's mouth and the wry smile which suddenly appeared as she nodded. It seemed the more serious their talk, the lighter Helena's mood. The author reflected back Myka's stress as pure joviality. It was disconcerting.

"What is your relationship with Nate?"

Helena looked away again and seemed to weigh the question carefully. Or perhaps she was just trying to phrase her answer for maximum impact, thought the agent. "That, my dearest Myka, is complicated to be sure."


	3. 3

"Seriously? Did you just give me the 'It's complicated' line?" shot back her companion.

Helena arched an eyebrow and cast a sidelong glance at the woman to her right. She was nothing if not conflicted about the agent sitting beside her. She had sincerely tried to put Myka out of her thoughts when she first came to Boone and was moderately successful in doing so. But over time, thoughts of the Warehouse agent had slowly crept back in. The small town did not offer a multiplicity of distractions and Helena found herself with far more time on her hands than could be managed practically. Much of that was spent sitting pensively in the town's only diner, doodling on a napkin or writing in her journal, and sipping truly horrid tea. During those times she indulged herself in every moment she had ever shared with Myka—every surreptitious glance, every intentionally brush, every detail of every story, and she replayed them on an infinite loop in her head. She had tried to occupy herself with work but the town needed only a part-time medical examiner and…

Helena was speaking again, in mid-thought, her response beyond her control.

"Perhaps a better query would be 'what is your relationship with Nate at the present time?' and given the events of the last few days, the answer would appear to be that there is none to speak of."

She was turning her ring now as she tried to organize her thoughts. Myka watched her fiddle nervously.

"And how do you feel about that?"

_Did I really just say that? What am I now, a therapist? _

She realized that despite the tone she had expected to deliver the question in, it had come out imbued with a real and heartfelt concern for the still broken woman she sat beside. Angry and jealous or not, she cared more about what Helena was going through than she did about her own petty frustrations, and Helena heard only the intended tone because of their ability to communicate—not so much in words, but more in subtext, half tones, and facial expressions.

"I don't care a fig for him."

Her Victorian turn of phrase was almost comical in the situation. When she turned her substantial powers of observation on herself, she realized that this was ultimately the truth. Nate was nice enough but it was Adelaide whom she loved and she knew that Myka understood that, even expected it of her.

"Would it be fair to say that you are unattached then?" teased Myka, seizing upon the change in mood, especially because she was more than a bit embarrassed by her blustery invasion of Helena's space.

"I'm not sure that 'unattached' is the right term for what I am. After all, my darling, if you'll recall, I just declared my love to someone less than five minutes ago. I rather suspect that the term 'attached' could be readily applied to _yours truly_, pun absolutely intended."

Silence.

It stretched on for seconds while the heartbeats piled up in Myka's chest. She had no idea how to respond to what was ostensibly Helena's second offering.

And then she did.

"So, what do you suggest we do about this?" asked her porch step companion as she stood and began to smooth her rumpled suit jacket too vigorously.

"I wasn't kidding about not going back in there." Myka threw a nod to the house behind them and held out a hand to help Helena to her feet.

"There is a little diner downtown. I could show you..." came the response as she rose, prolonging the contact with Myka's hand a split second beyond what was truly necessary.

"We could talk. Perhaps something that's long overdue."

Helena's eyes were finally and irrevocably fixed on the taller woman. Even in her boots Helena found herself looking up into the agent's gentle face and straining to see whether her admission had simply blown by Myka like a gust of wind or if she had been as struck by the author's words as the author herself had been. She was surprised, really, that she had let her governor slip for just an instant and that the emotion had tumbled out seemingly of its own accord. The feeling had always been there, she thought, from even the earliest times. This was no case of affection growing with time and nearness—this was pure and unadulterated, an instant connection with what Helena took to be her soul mate. She had held back as best she could, covered the pangs of need with a thin veneer of innuendo, and hoped that Myka could sense the real river of emotion running far beneath the still façade.

Myka was smiling at her now. Not the goofy and uncomfortable grin of their earlier goodbyes, but the smile of someone finally happy to have been eased of a heavy burden.

Helena led the agent down the steps towards the rental.

Myka's hands plumbed the depths of her pockets and she took a sudden interest in the pavement in front of her, slowing her stride as Helena guided her to the passenger side of the car. But Myka abruptly stopped in front of the car, blocking what was certainly meant to be a chivalrous act on Helena's part—the proffering of an open door. She turned and leaned back against the window glass, her slouch bringing her more or less to the same height as the slight beauty before her. Helena pulled up short, not anticipating her agent's move and found herself closer to Myka than she feared would be comfortable for her companion.

Were it not for her natural feline agility she might have fallen into the agent. Before she could react to the accidental proximity, Myka had drawn Helena to her, her hands on the Brit's waist over the thin leather jacket. The gasp which escaped Helena bore witness to the incalculable odds against such a thing happening. Helena was quite sure that she was misinterpreting the events which were unfolding for her in slow motion. Surely she had indeed fallen into the agent and Myka had caught her, selfless as always. Soon she would laugh and brush off her clumsiness, but in the moment that should have happened, Myka had leaned down and was now warming her forehead against Helena's.

She spoke in a voice barely audible to the woman whose form just grazed her own.

"Can I ask you another question?"

Before Helena could reply, Myka continued, afraid that the other woman might deny her simple request.

"Can I kiss you?"


	4. 4

Silence again.

Helena was quite sure that she hadn't heard Myka correctly.

After all, it was impossible that the woman she had been standing in her kitchen thinking about in just those terms was asking for what she herself had been wanting since Tamalpais. Too long she hesitated in her incredulity.

Predictably the agent interpreted Helena's stunned silence as deferral.

"Okay, no, I get it. I'm famous for reading too much into things…"

She disengaged her hands from Helena's sides and drove the heels of her palms into her eyes as she stepped away from the vehicle, the perceived rejection stinging. This was turning out to be weirder than she had anticipated and she had only herself to blame for the weird. Hadn't the Victorian just told her that she had purposely avoided contact with her?

And as the supposition of her unrequited desire took hold, it was Myka who was being drawn back against the warmth of the other woman. Helena had pulled her hands from her face and redirected them to her own sides again. There was no last coherent thought in Myka's mind before the smaller woman had tugged her lapels forward and pulled the agent down to touch her lips with her own. Even if she had been capable of cogent thought prior to that time, such capacity was surely gone now.

The slow softness of Helena's mouth on her own made wishing that she could suspend time itself the only thought possible. It was everything she had expected and yet not at all like anything she had ever known. She had watched intently in the past as the author and inventor talked, smiled, laughed, and sipped her ever present cup of tea. But all the direct and indirect staring at, and quite frankly fantasizing about the contours of Helena's mouth, had not prepared her for the first-hand experience she was having now. The butterflies were gone, replaced by something which tightened like a knot in her abdomen and sent tendrils of fire into her extremities. All the kisses before this time she dismissed as perfunctory—and instantly obsolete. Made worse by the fact that being so close to Helena was itself intoxicating—like the warmth of an unexpected beam of sunshine on an otherwise uncomfortably cool day.

But this was immeasurably better than just sharing space with her, sitting next to her on the steps, or even being lashed to her by the ropes of the Mary Celeste. She never wanted to be away from Helena's warmth again.

The Victorian broke their kiss frequently but never strayed more than a few millimeters from Myka's face, preferring instead to stay close enough to gently brush the agent's features with her lips or nose, the fine eyelashes tickling the agent's sensitive skin as they skirted her jawline again and again.

Myka was finally able to utter a few intelligible syllables when Helena denied her the escalation of their kiss into truly passionate territory. She parted herself from the inventor and once again warmed her forehead against the author's, sighing her frustration. The stoic Englishwoman had been using her hands as ballast to support herself against the car window, bracing her weight there so as not to put the pressure she desired too much on the Warehouse agent. But want got the better of her and she moved her hands to Myka's face instead.

There could be no doubt about who was in control of their direction in this second act. Though Myka had chosen the starting point, it was Helena who led, cradling the agent's face and stroking her temple as she kissed her deeply, pulling back in an effort to discover her effect on the other woman. As she wound her fingers in the curls at the base of the agent's neck and stroked the thin material of the shirt under Myka's collar, she simultaneously glimpsed and grazed the familiar.

Her intent was only to let her lips trace the edge of the agent's ear until Myka winced away from the inevitable tickle there. But she had discovered so much more. Under Myka's collar was the chain she knew better than to hope to see again. She was wearing the locket. Her fingers traced the shape of it under the agent's shirt.

"I kept it for you," mumbled the Warehouse agent before Helena could ask. "There never seemed to be a good time to return it to you after Sykes."

As she said this, she used the distraction to reverse their positions. Myka now towered over the woman she needed desperately to hear and see her, pinning her against the side of the vehicle. It was her turn to brace herself against the car and attempt to hold herself away from the slight woman she wanted so much to push into.

"The truth is that I kept it so that I would always have an excuse to see you. I could have returned it to you—I planned to a thousand times—but I was afraid that I would lose you to the dark places and I wouldn't have a tether to hold you by or drag you back to me. And then you left so abruptly and I forgot that I had it." Myka squelched the rambling she felt welling up in her and reached up to her own neck to hold the locket as if she were afraid that Helena might snatch it away from her.

Helena was quiet. Her hands were still at the agent's neck. It appeared to Myka that she had decided what to say and then discarded the idea before seizing on another response, and then discarding that one too. All the while she looked into Myka's eyes with a directness that the agent found unsettling but familiar. Censure felt like a foregone conclusion. Myka braced herself for it.

"I want you to keep it."

"What? Why?" Myka whispered loudly, taken aback by the sudden metaphorical thrusting of so much responsibility onto her shoulders.

"You don't have to keep it if you don't want to. After all darling, I don't want you to think of Christina and I as your wards."

"Of course I don't feel that way," responded the agent, her brow instantly furrowing at the suggestion. "It makes me feel closer to you is all."

"Myka, I trust you to keep it safe. There are not many things in this life that I can say that about but this is surely one of them."

That was all it took. Myka could only manage a breathy hum before she turned her attention back to seducing the woman who had been no farther than the back of her thoughts for the past three years. "What if I asked to keep your heart the same way? Could you trust me with that too?"

She was impossibly close to Helena, exhaling hot against the shorter woman's temple. She was breathing in the silky strands of ink and had begun to thread her fingers through them at the back of Helena's head. The Englishwoman wanted to answer but found herself needing desperately to recapture Myka's lips with her own and drink the agent in. She had fought against her desire for Myka for so long and now that the dam had broken, maintaining her control was exponentially more difficult with each passing minute.

Only one thing could turn her aside from her goal and it was a question that she now had to ask the woman wrapped around her. She broke again from the kiss.

"Can I ask you a question now, darling?"

"Anything." Myka was so close that the answer reverberated between their chests.

"Can you help me pack?"


	5. 5

"Hey Mykes, whoa…you look like ass. What happened? Been up all night crying over HG? I'm sorry…was that insensitive?"

Myka directed her best withering glare into the Farnsworth. It wasn't easy considering she couldn't argue with Pete's logic. He couldn't help it if he was way off base. His vibes were clearly failing him. True, she did not look her best, but that was largely a product of bed head and the too-quick bid to find her clothes when the Farnsworth blared to life. Answering the damnable thing had required a surfeit of cool and a bit of creativity. Having initiated her fair share of calls, she knew that the key to not giving away her circumstance was to crowd the video screen. Unfortunately for Pete, that meant a close up look at the haggard visage she couldn't help at this early hour.

"Give me an hour Pete, and then come get me. I'll be at the diner on Main Street."

"You okay there, _pardner_?" Pete was attempting a John Wayne impersonation and failing miserable in this too.

"I'm fine Pete," she managed a hint of smile before dismissing him, "see you in an hour."

She unceremoniously clapped the Farnsworth shut and glanced around the motel room—a task easily accomplished by just looking up. Myka contemplated missing her connection with Pete and returning to the warmth of the sheets but incipient dehydration made that an impossible dream. It was time to get up and put things into some semblance of order. She pulled her shirt from the floor and dowsed for the underwear she suspected she would find in a ball at the foot of the bed under the covers.

"Eureka," she muttered to herself when she felt them with her toes.

Ancient Greek for "I've found it", the uttered phrase transported Myka back to her college days when she was in the habit of saying such things in front of others without embarrassment. Her fellow teaching assistants in the classics department were nothing if not affable and quirky themselves. Here, in the empty motel room, there was no one to judge her love of dead languages. Even if Helena _had_ been in the room, her nascent curiosity about and appreciation for all things linguistic, and all things Myka especially, would have made it unlikely that the barely audible exclamatory would have excited comment from her. And as the agent pictured Helena's quirked eyebrow and gentle smirk at her inability to reign in her nerdiness, the floodgates of memory opened and the events of last night washed over her.

Helena was waiting for her.

Because it was midnight she made quick work of the registration process, and yet it felt glacially slow. Myka failed to see how writing down the tag number of a rental on the form made sense when hers was the only vehicle in the motel parking lot. But rules were rules and the agent could appreciate the necessity for them. It was just unfortunate that this particular rule was keeping her from something which was making her nerves hum with anticipation. Some_one_.

They hadn't touched since they had parted in the driveway, stepping back from one another awkwardly, and now the contact of Helena's hand at the small of her back as she used the laughably ancient key lit a fuse she hadn't known lay just under the skin there. The heat traveled along her limbs and radiated outward so that by the time she had closed the door behind them she had no choice but to drive Helena back against it with her weight. There were only a couple of inches of height separating them but those inches fired in Myka a protectiveness and possessiveness she had rarely felt before. She wanted to curl around the dark beauty and shield her from the hostile present and her own sad past.

Before she could analyze her response to Helena, her hands were on the Englishwoman's jaw of their own volition, cradling her face again and drawing her into the fire so that she wouldn't burn alone. Kissing had never been like this and Myka couldn't help reveling in it a bit. She drew out every contact with the other woman, letting her lips linger and her tongue paint slowly over the contours of the other woman's mouth. What Helena and she were doing to each other made remembering Sam's kisses very difficult. Her former partner inspired a sense of comfort in her, but never the white hot bolts which shot through her when she contemplated what else she and Helena might do to each other in the sanctity of this cheap motel room. She had the vague feeling that the Victorian had that effect on all her lovers.

By the time that thought occurred to her, the author's hands had traveled to the buttons of her own shirt and Myka realized how close to the edge of the precipice she was standing.

"Wait."

Myka hardly believed that she had said it. The words hung in the air, almost tangible, making her realize that Helena was no doubt reading a hesitation in her words which she had not intended.

She clarified.

"_I _want to…" …and Myka's hands replaced the author's at her shirt.

Helena seemed to understand that the agent needed to control what was happening between them. Not because she was apprehensive about making love with a woman for the first time, though she was, but rather because she needed to retain some sense of power so that the experience felt real for her. This was not going to happen _to_ her. She was not going to wake up and wonder if it had been a dream. The agent in her wanted a record of what transpired. And Helena could deny her nothing.

As the buttons slipped through her fingers one by one, Myka's attentions migrated to Helena's collarbone and she stooped to place her lips on the indentation there. Helena had slipped out of her leather jacket and as it dropped to the floor at their feet, the agent became suddenly and acutely aware that the likely end of this scenario was one or both of them standing in the doorway sans clothing. Myka didn't want that.

She took Helena's hand from its place on her hip and led her to the edge of the motel bed.

"I have no intentions of sleeping tonight," Helena warned as she looked past Myka to the shambles of a mattress and box springs behind her.

Myka's response was somber when compared to the playful lilt in Helena's words.

"What are your intentions?"

**NB. I think it quite likely that, as we have skirted the edge here, my next chapter will be accompanied by a rating change. Forewarned is forearmed.**


	6. 6

_NB. Perhaps a bit more edge-skirting before that rating change  
_

"My intentions?"

"Yes, you do have them, don't you?" asked the agent earnestly, "or is this you operating without a plan?" She was still holding the author's hand and squeezed it playfully to punctuate her question.

The Cheshire cat in Helena grinned and her sly, wanton look was not lost on Myka. She meant whatever she was about to say and the agent leaned in so that she could savor every word.

"My intentions are to ruin you for whoever has the misfortune to be next, darling."

Helena pulled Myka to her again, exactly as she had in the driveway, and kissed her so that the agent forgot her own name. The Englishwoman was as good as her word and Myka was already having a difficult time imagining how she would ever again equal this experience. The author's hands were tracing her edges while her form pressed against the agent's and heated her nearly to the point of discomfort. Myka found her own hands again at the buttons of Helena's flowing shirt and it was only a moment before she had her prize: she was gazing at an expanse of alabaster which made her feel like Pygmalion standing before his living statue. She inhabited the role of sculptor gratefully, bringing her lips down to inspect the curves of Helena's collarbone again and allowing her fingertips to slip beneath the silky material and encourage it down the arms of the woman before her.

"Is this alright?"

Helena stifled the arch comment, reminding herself that she was in love with the brunette standing in front of her. Instead she nodded and resumed the searing connection which Myka had interrupted to inquire about her comfort. When the two reluctantly separated again, she spoke.

"Darling, you don't have to ask me. I am yours irrevocably. Do with me whatever you will. But I have to tell you," Helena paused to tighten her fingers in the curls at the base of the agent's neck and pull them so that she could breathe into Myka's neck and ear as she continued, "that you are making it very difficult for me to control myself. I am too used to being at the helm, shall we say, and I'm afraid that I will not be able to contain my passion much longer. I don't want to frighten you."

Myka gave Helena permission as explicitly as she could. She wasn't afraid.

"I want you to touch me."

"Very well then," smiled Helena, "let's start right here." And no sooner had the words left her lips, Helena's hands were at Myka's midsection, dragging the plum colored shirt off her without hesitation. A fair amount of appreciation, yes, but she was too focused on her goal to pause for a longer time. When Helena dropped to her knees, Myka finally understood what real domination was. Not that she felt in control at all, quite the opposite. She imagined that this must be how men felt with a beautiful woman kneeling in front of them: enthralled and completely captivated. She had always assumed that they must have experienced an unparalleled rush of power. How wrong she had been. Like her erstwhile brothers, she was a puppet incapable of thought. All else was pure bravado—this was real subjugation.

_She owns me._

Helena was pressing kisses to her midriff and lower but as Myka reached for the night-black tresses, her hand came away empty. The Victorian had already bent over the agent's boots, unzipping them. When she had finished, she nudged the taller woman. Off balance and unprepared to defend herself, Myka fell back onto the bed with a laugh, reaching up to pull the object of her affections down to her. Helena was only too happy to oblige and, owing to Myka's quick reflexes in mid fall, found herself lying roughly on top of her intended prey. The soft laugh blunted the apprehension Myka still felt at being so close to the other woman, making it easier now to be playful.

"How is it that it's taken you so long to get me into your bed?" she asked the author pointedly as she swept the soft black curtain separating them to the side of Helena's face, pinning the locks more or less behind her ear. _She was so close._

Charmed by Myka's attempt at levity, Helena simply shrugged and cocked her head to the side.

"I blame the bronzing, darling. It has slowed my reflexes."

The Cheshire cat again. She stroked Myka's hairline and mused, "I do so worry that you'll be disappointed in my shortcomings because of it."

Helena knew she had little to fear in that way but wanted so much to put the other woman at ease with their closeness. She needed desperately to show Myka how she felt about her. Especially after the long and tortuous wait she had inflicted on them both. The agent had pulled her back from the edge so many times it felt like abandoning her duty not to return the favor. And it occurred to Helena, as she thought, that it might be fun to push the agent over an edge or two as well. Push, coax, wheedle, cajole, beckon. Whatever it took to get Myka to fly into the flame with her.

Myka saw right through the façade. Helena _was_ nervous, despite the sheen of command. She knew the other woman—every corner of her psyche—and saw immediately the insecurities about where they stood with one another. Helena was not just looking for a good time with the agent. She wanted a deeper connection. She wanted to make solid and real what she believed they already had and had been circumnavigating for the past two years. She wanted proof that she wasn't crazy. That she was worthy.

She needed to hear it.

"You know," Myka stage whispered, trying to maintain the lightness in her voice, "maybe I'm just old fashioned, Helena, but I don't sleep with people I am not in love with. So you can't disappoint me."

Her admission brought tears to the inventor's eyes. It was the response she didn't know she had been hoping for. But she was facing a different problem now—she was in danger of destroying the mood by allowing herself to be overcome. Letting Myka watch her dissolve into tears was not an option she wished to exercise at the moment, so she put aside her emotional response in favor of a coy reply, sure that Myka would recognize it as the misdirection it was.

"How very 1800s of you, darling."

Myka offered a coy rejoinder of her own, smiling mischievously up at the woman she wanted as much as she loved.

"Now, where were we?"


	7. 7

_NB. I'm afraid that the rating change might feel a bit abrupt to some and yet…the heart wants what it wants._

"There….right _there_….." Myka words were barely audible. "God, don't stop."

Helena took a second to redirect herself, not that she didn't instinctively know exactly what the agent needed from her. She had no intention of stopping. The Victorian knew within seconds of touching and tasting Myka that she would never have another lover. Her lascivious boast had backfired and it was she instead who had been ruined by this creature with both hands in her hair…the one pulling less than gently. And if she wasn't exceedingly careful, the sounds coming from the agent were going to sweep her away in a river of ecstasy before she had given the woman the attention she so richly deserved. Helena slowed herself, albeit with some difficulty, focusing on what Myka was saying, waiting to hear her name again.

"God, don't stop…_don't stop_." The pitch of her voice rose a half step.

Myka's earthiness reminded her of things she found challenging at first but became addicted to quickly. Wagner, pipe tobacco, claret. It seemed that this would be no different. Helena had been in the habit of comparing women to wine in her previous life and this practice came back to her immediately. Most of the wine in her past had not been from Bordeaux but from the Champagne region—light and airy. Easily dismissed and forgotten. It left little after taste on the palette. Myka was different. Complex. Subtle. Something to be returned to again and again, like a favorite passage in a novel.

She was also surprisingly vocal beneath her. Helena had assumed that she would be as quiet and introspective in the throes of lovemaking as she was in her favorite easy chair in the warehouse library. Suspecting that she herself was the catalyst for change in the agent, and considering Myka's lack of experience with the fairer sex, Helena pushed the woman at the tip of her tongue to tell her what she wanted. What was the point of all the relative sexual freedom if a lover couldn't communicate what she wanted? So she encouraged the agent to respond to her verbally from the time they had fallen onto the bed together by whispering and talking near constantly as she undressed and caressed her. Fortunately for Helena, Bering was either a quick study or a study in contrasts.

Either way, she needed to hear her name now. It was imperative that Myka acknowledge who was doing this to her, who possessed her. She slowed herself to a near halt, knowing that it would elicit a reaction from the woman beneath her. And it did.

_"Please, Helena."_

The white hot bolts were shooting through her now and she worried that her own approaching orgasm would distract her from what she was doing to the woman with whom she had fused so seamlessly. Her arm, looped under and around the agent's right thigh, hand firmly on top of it, acted as a seismograph, picking up small tremors and alerting her to the nearness of the oncoming volcanic tide. This was the crux for the artificer. She was inventing. She was creating an experience for the woman she loved and for herself. It was what she excelled at. And she was rewarded for her efforts when Myka pulled again—longer and harder than before. The crescendo of her low moan followed, and despite the best of intentions and the fact that Myka wasn't touching her, it was happening. She felt herself rushing over the falls with the woman who arched underneath her, who was drawing her up to hold her through the most excruciatingly beautiful seconds either one had ever known. So Helena held her.

It was minutes before either could summon the power to speak.

"I don't know why I am surprised that you were able to do that to me," the sweat-slick agent smiled, pushing her hair off her forehead. "You've been looking at me with that cat-that-ate-the-canary look since Atlas House. If I had known what it meant, I might have burst through your door sooner." She looked as though she had just emerged from a sauna, her skin shining in the dim light of the motel room. A sliver of streetlamp cut across the room through the pulled curtains, lighting a strip of the worn bed and its luminous occupants. Myka was serious though, and reverent as she touched Helena's face, lightly tracing the edge of her brow and cheekbone with the tip of her index finger, all the while staring into her eyes with a kind of understanding that Helena had come to expect from her.

"If I thought that I might have gotten away with it on that very day, do you think anything could have stopped me?" Helena hovered slightly above her, millimeters away from her face again. She was breathing Myka in and memorizing her contours, taking care against the probability that her life would wrest the woman away from her like it had taken Christina.

Myka let herself be breathed in and memorized, certain that if this one woman knew her as well as someone _could_ be known that she would always feel this way. Safe. Complete. Happy.

Alone in the room without Helena she felt much less so. Morning had come too soon and, without the few hours of sleep she normally subsisted on, her head hurt from the conundrum. _Jesus._

Why had Helena left? The curt responses to Pete had been born of her quick assumption that she had been abandoned again by the Brit. She slipped the recovered undergarments back on and looked again for a note—some assurance that the woman she _may or may not have fallen asleep on _at 5am had not decided to reclaim her hetero-normative lifestyle. It was a losing battle perhaps. Myka considered how appealing the life of Emily Lake must seem to Helena. The Warehouse had taken so much away from her and left her so broken. The reasonable response to a threat was flight, thought the agent, ergo, Helena's response was reasonable. Now Myka felt the burden weighing her down. She had scared Helena away again. If only she had given her more time, not pressed her to say something she wasn't ready to say or leave behind the safety of the suburbs. As she pondered it, she realized her mistake: in point of fact she had not pressed Helena. _Well, except for the barging into her house thing_. But she never pressured her to leave behind the pseudo family she had committed the last five months to. They hadn't spoken of Nate since leaving the front steps of his home.

Myka found herself headed to the bathroom and the hideously tiled shower surround. She couldn't repress the urge to cry and the best place to do that was the shower. She needed to feel the blast of the spray rinsing the tears away so that she could focus on the future instead of the past. She needed to get moving and meet Pete at the diner anyway. From there, she would figure it out.

The lime encrusted shower head made it unpleasant going at first, but within minutes, the hot water on her skin had made her feel like she was cleaning the cobwebs from her mind as well, that she could martial what little energy she still had after her night with Helena to find her and convince her not to run from her truth anymore.

The door of the motel room clicked shut but it wasn't until she heard the sound of the heavy bag thudding to the floor that she was certain.

"Myka darling, what are you doing in there without me?" Helena was leaning in the bathroom doorway, looking every bit the dashing vision though still in her clothes from last night. Myka had drawn the curtain back, relieved at the sight of her. Suddenly aware that Helena was looking at her expectantly, Myka knew she didn't have to convince the author of anything.

Before she could reply, Helena was discarding a boot and sliding her jacket off as she spoke.

"And in answer to the questions you've yet to ask…"

The other boot hit the floor.

"First, I didn't wake you to come help me pack because you looked so like an angel this morning, I couldn't disturb your sleep," Helena arched an eyebrow as she continued, "and I _know_ that you were exhausted."

Helena's hands were at the buttons of her shirt now.

"Second, yes, that is coffee you smell. I stopped on the way back." The wry smile returned.

The sound of the curtain being pulled back was followed by the sensation of hands on her waist and the familiar shape behind her.

"Last, darling…yes, I will ride up front _with Pete_ to the airport."

Myka had all the answers she needed.


End file.
